


everything is better when you're learning (everything was made to keep on turning)

by opaldawn



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: (since that is literally all i write.), 5+1 Things, Breakfast in Bed, Canon Compliant (for now), F/F, Healthy Communication, Kissing, Legendary Lesbians in Retirement, Relationship Study, Spoilers for Episode: s3e15-16 Juno Steel and the Heart of It All, ch1 tags:, each chapter is a standalone story!, piano playing, plant lesbians, post-Heart of It All
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27045181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opaldawn/pseuds/opaldawn
Summary: The journal had been a wedding present from Jet, leather-bound and sturdy with a cord tied around the front. She hadn't really appreciated it at first- "Hey, uh, thanks, Siquliak, but don't write home asking whether I've- whether I've finished my memoirs, or something”- but as usual, he’d known some grand bullshit about Vespa’s true nature or something. She keeps meaning to thank him about it. The pen, she doesn’t even remember where she picked it up. Its cap’s been chewed on enough that you could probably figure out Vespa’s dental records from it.The pages are recycled paper, thinly lined and a pale yellow. Its first dozen pages are full up with notes in a messy doctor’s scrawl, ink blots and dog-eared pages. Each line, each entry, consists of the same thing— a date, followed by a word or short phrase, nothing more. A memory.-"This was never gonna be a normal marriage. Would've driven ourselves nuts if we tried it. I'm already planning to keep learning things about you until the day we die."-vespa ilkay to buddy aurinko, juno steel and the heart of it all, part 2
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay
Comments: 19
Kudos: 22





	everything is better when you're learning (everything was made to keep on turning)

**Author's Note:**

> weehoo hello again penumbra stannies!! did that episode emotionally destroy and subsequently rebuild you or WHAT?? 
> 
> first multichap fic i've ever tried it out, can't wait to see how it goes! if all goes well i'll be updating it twice weekly, except the week around halloween due to college application reasons. but each chapter can be read as a standalone story!
> 
> title from tally hall's _you and me_ which i think just fits beautifully with these two.
> 
> _sitting in the park  
>  carefully remark  
>  everything is better when you're learning_
> 
> _you were in the dark_  
>  _i was in the dark_  
>  _everything was made to keep on turning_

Like any good thieves, like any good lovers, Buddy and Vespa have their secrets from each other. Vespa's is nothing special, just a little journal and a black ballpoint pen. 

The journal had been a wedding present from Jet, leather-bound and sturdy with a cord tied around the front. She hadn't really appreciated it at first- _"Hey, uh, thanks, Siquliak, but don't write home asking whether I've- whether I've finished my memoirs, or something”-_ but as usual, he’d known some grand bullshit about Vespa’s true nature or something. She keeps meaning to thank him about it. The pen, she doesn’t even remember where she picked it up. Its cap’s been chewed on enough that you could probably figure out Vespa’s dental records from it.

The pages are recycled paper, thinly lined and a pale yellow. Its first dozen pages are full up with notes in a messy doctor’s scrawl, ink blots and dog-eared pages. Each line, each entry, consists of the same thing— a date, followed by a word or short phrase, nothing more. A memory.

-

  * **_aug30- piano_**



Buddy’d just gotten up from another few weeks of bedrest after another surgery. This one had been particularly nasty, an infected surgical drain, and she’d been down and out for a while now. She’d taken it in good stride, but it was pretty obvious she’d just about reached the end of her rope vis a vis her world being confined to that specific six square feet of the bedroom.

Vespa had woken her up that morning with breakfast in bed, such as it was. Black coffee and chocolate babka for her, an array of pills and a glass of just obscenely expensive cognac for Buddy. A kiss to the ridge of her brow just above her natural eye. Another to the paper-thin wrinkled skin above her ‘netic. She’d been making her way softly down the line of Buddy’s jaw before her wife— god, never gets old— finally woke up with a contented sigh.

“Heya, Bud,” Vespa had said. “Feeling any better?”

“Mm, too early to tell.” She yawned. "Your kisses certainly aren't hurting, though, darling. Keep it up and I might just be healed on the spot."

"Medical miracle, that'd be," Vespa muttered. "Let's test it out. Here." She pulled Buddy's nightshirt— dark red and silk, soft against her calloused fingers— over her head, and pressed a kiss just over the long, puckered scar on Buddy's chest. 

The mechanical heart thrummed beneath Vespa's lips in a steady rhythm, several parts recently replaced. For a moment Vespa was torn between anger at the hunk of metal that nearly stole her wife away from her, and amazement at the miracle, medical and otherwise, who'd trusted her with her body, her life. She lingered there over Buddy, listening to the faintly electronic beeping of her chest. Letting it fill her mind and slow down the racing of her thoughts just a little. 

Then Buddy reached up and ran her fingers through Vespa's freshly-dyed hair and down the back of her neck. "Did it work, darling?" she asked, teasing. 

"I don't know," said Vespa. She'd just been messing around, just wanted to wake Buddy up real nicely, but now she felt strangely… vulnerable. "You tell me."

Buddy'd always been good when it came to reading people, and she'd had a lot of time to study with Vespa. Her face softened just a little bit, and she wrapped her arms around Vespa. 

"Vespa, dear," she said, fingers still carding through her hair. "If a. Hm. If a kiss was all it took, we wouldn't be— if a single kiss could cure me forever, we wouldn't be on this lovely planet now, would we?" She points out the window at the Earthen skyline in front of them, overgrown and geometrical. "And when we, when we, when my operations are over, or at least for the foreseeable future, we can settle down and you can kiss me whenever you want." She ran her finger across Vespa's lips. 

Vespa blinked quickly, several times. Just a piece of dust in her eye, for sure. Goddamn rental must not have been swept since the last people to stay there. "Damnit, Bud," she said, "you always know just what to say." 

"Less so," replied Buddy, "now that you don't give me time to plan out a plethora of one-liners." She stretched, sitting up slightly, Vespa still pressed against her chest. "Now tell me, doctor. Is breakfast in bed going to become a regular part of the recovery process? If so, I might try and find some squeaking joints or strained tendons requiring surgery."

"Don't get used to it." Vespa grinned nonetheless "Woke up feeling extra sappy, is all. Now, take those pills and don't drink too much. You're getting up from that bed today, and I've got big plans. Got it?"

"I think," Buddy matched her smile, "with the promise of big plans to look forward to, I could be inclined to be a very agreeable patient." 

\--

It was afternoon by the time the two of them made it down to the Terran garden. It wasn’t a tourist trap, overgrown and tricky to navigate as it was, and the two were practically the only ones there. 

Vespa took her time reading the description cards for each plant, taking photos carefully and feeling the edges of the leaves. Buddy'd called it 'adorable', which she resented; she was a damn medic, she needed to know her plants. And, well, if she was just a little starstruck by the biodiversity and the carefully written descriptions of each, nobody needed to know that. 

As she was reading, Buddy stood up from her chair slowly, supporting herself with an arm on Vespa's shoulder. She'd argued against the wheelchair— “Vespa, dear, I was able to walk with half my body rotten away, I can walk after two weeks of remission from a minor operation”— but Vespa had convinced her in the end. 

"Darling, I'm going to see if I can manage a little stroll," she said. "I'll be back in ten minutes, all right? I promise. If I'm not, you come looking for me." Vespa knew what Buddy really meant by that— the garden was pretty quiet this time of day, and they'd long passed the statute of limitations for any havoc they'd wreaked on Earth. And though from anyone else she'd have taken it as a jab at her paranoia, from Buddy it was so clearly genuine.

She turned her head to press a gentle kiss to Buddy's forehead. "All right, Bud," she said, still half focusing on the therapeutic properties of the brightly-colored vine in front of her. "You be careful, okay? Don't push yourself too hard." 

"I'd never dream of it." Buddy laughed softly as she walked away, past a canopy of vines over a large oak tree. 

There was a time in Vespa's life where _being alone_ was her only wish. Then, it became her biggest fear; then simply a way of life. Now, running her finger along a word in an ancient Terran language she didn't recognize, taking a quick photo of the sign, it was… manageable. Buddy would be back, she always would, and in the meantime she was safe. The thought of that, of _safety_ , still struck her as almost funny— really, what were the odds that she'd have ended up here?— but she'd gotten a hell of a lot better at accepting it. 

Having something to do, something that genuinely interested her in a way that she hadn't felt in a while, helped keep the sharp-edged thoughts and muffled sounds at the back of her mind. She plucked a leaf off the vine, smelled it, tucked it into her comms case. Maybe she could start a little garden, back on the ship, she thought. 

When she was young, before the Curemother and the Board of Fresh Starts and even before Buddy and dreams of going out in a blaze of glory, she'd tended to a little garden back with her— well. Back on— ugh. Back when she was young. Liked it a lot, too, the repetitive motions and routine helping her back when the only voices to block out were all too real.

She shook her head. _You're drifting, V, get out of your head_. The memories floated away as she did some breathing-counting thing that Jet had taught her, and left her with just the feeling of the sun and the quiet of the garden.

No- not quite quiet. There was… music? Yeah, no question about it, the faint sounds of an instrument. Well, that wasn't unfamiliar, music being one of the more common— one of her more common, too— auditory hallucinations. But the weird thing was what it _wasn't._ Not a Rangian drinking song, not one of Jet's melodies, but something she didn't think she'd ever heard before. Something… pretty. 

_Pretty_ was unusual, for things that her brain came up with. So she turned away from the plants with a little sigh, deciding to find Buddy just to check with her. The path that she remembered Buddy having taken was overgrown a little, and Vespa stopped on a whim to pick a deep orange flower off a bush. 

The music grew louder as Vespa followed her wife's path through the greenery. It was… well, Vespa wasn't the kind of person to sit around listening to music for fun, had never really taken much interest in it. But maybe she was going soft in her old age, or maybe it was something about the garden or the song. It was like she could _feel_ the music, pressing against her heart or some other cute metaphor. 

She was deep enough in her head that when the path ended pretty suddenly, opening up to a clearing, it took her a second to put everything together. 

Buddy sat at an old, heavily graffitied piano, eye and camera shutter closed, back bowed slightly as her fingers traced their way along the ivory keys. She swayed slightly with the music, leaning closer to the keys when the tune swelled to a crescendo. And god, it wasn't like Vespa could ever _forget_ how beautiful she was, not waking up next to her every day, but right now she looked. Well. Vespa didn't like purple prose, but _ethereal_ seemed to fit pretty well. 

She had the brief, irrational thought of _I don't deserve this_ , feeling almost as though she was intruding on something precious. Something holy. There hadn't been many sacred things in her life for her to balance it against, but the way that Buddy's hair caught the sunlight as she kept time with her head measured up to any stained glass. 

A particularly dissonant chord had Vespa digging her thumbnail into her palm and willing herself not to tear up. A soft noise made its way from her mouth, and Buddy startled slightly, missing a beat as she looked over to her right. She gave Vespa a soft smile, then went back to focusing on the piano. 

Quietly, trying her hardest not to disturb her but not being able to stand the distance between them, Vespa walked over to stand just next to Buddy, watching the contrast of her long, dark fingers against the piano's yellowing keys. From here, she could feel the steady vibrations of the sound through the packed earth. And if the fact that the music pushed a knot of emotion to the back of her throat meant that she was losing her touch... well, she'd lost worse things, hadn't she.

The song ended on a gentle trill, a suddenly-major chord pressed down to the bottom of the piano, and Vespa sat down gently at the edge of the bench. Buddy let out a breath she'd been holding, and tension melted from her shoulders. 

"Bud," Vespa said, her voice coming out small and whispered against the now-silence. "I don't—"

"Was it awful, darling?" asked Buddy, and Vespa could sense a sliver of sincerity even though her light tone. She reached up, smooth thumb wiping away a wetness on Vespa's cheekbone, and Vespa could feel herself blushing furiously. 

"Honey," she settled for, not trusting herself to say much else yet, "I didn't know you could play piano."

"Would you believe me if I told you I can't?" Buddy ran her thumb down the side of Vespa's face. "It's just a very well-crafted automaton, and I thought it might be amusing to try and play along."

"Stop _teasing,_ " Vespa admonished, wrapping her arms around Buddy's waist and pulling her close. "You're— that was—" Vespa didn't find herself lost for words too often, but she'd rarely had to describe something like. Like that. In lieu of stuttering, she pulled Buddy in for a deep kiss, pressing her back against the piano. Several notes rang out at once, and Buddy laughed against her lips. 

Her laugh was as striking as her playing had been, hanging in the air, and Vespa slid a hand into Buddy's hair, pulling her closer, closer, until the two found themselves entwined against the piano bench's cracked leather, half-laying next to each other, breathless with laughter and kiss-drunk. 

Vespa reached up absently and tapped one of the high notes on the piano. She hadn't quite been expecting it to make a sound, and gasped slightly when it did. Buddy made to start laughing at her, but Vespa cut her off with a kiss and then a question. "Where'd you learn to play like that?”

Buddy got that far-off look in her eye, her camera clicking a few times. "You remember I owned a bar in the Cerberus Province," she started, and Vespa nodded. "I'd seen a rather nice upright piano at a gala where the owners were… not using it… and had, one could say, _liberated_ it to add a little bit of atmosphere to the place. Well, in the quiet hours, early morning and early afternoon, it was— terribly lonely, especially when Siquliak was elsewhere." She breathed out a deep sigh, and Vespa ran her hand up and down her back comfortingly. "One day I found myself sitting in front of the instrument, and. Well. It was something to do."

Her voice caught on the last word, and when Vespa looked at her, she found her eye screwed shut tightly, brow furrowed. 

"Honey," she said softly. "You know you don't gotta tell me anything that you don't want to talk about, right? I… I get it. If it hurts. I really do.”

Buddy shook her head, exhaling slowly through her nose. “I appreciate it, darling, but I’m quite all right. Everything that happened to me in those ten years— it’s part of me, and there’s no putting it aside, not even the parts that make me feel like. Hm. Like a cracked ceramic vase. For fifty years I made the mistake of thinking that I could simply push away the parts of me that hurt, and put my skills on display— keep the piano, drop the loneliness. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t. Ah.” She trailed off. “I’m rambling, aren’t I. Thank you for listening to me, anyways.”

Vespa had heard her say things to that effect a hundred times. She knew that Buddy wasn’t saying it for her benefit, not really, knew that giving advice and talking things through was how Buddy grounded herself. 

“Okay,” she said. She nestled her head against Buddy’s shoulder. ”Of course. I’ll always listen to you. And— and for what it’s worth. I think you sounded great.”

“Great?” Buddy smiled, the light returning to her eye. “That’s high praise, love. From the way you kissed me, I was guessing that you found it simply mediocre.”

Vespa laughed. “You’re incredible, Bud. I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me all this time! I mean, what else have you got just hidden away?”

“Not much,” Buddy swirled a lock of Vespa’s hair around her index finger, grinning. “I’m really rather a dull woman, I hope you don’t mind.”

Vespa snorted a laugh, but Buddy continued. “Other than the piano, I’ve just spent my life sitting around crocheting, watching bad streams. I dream of the day I’ll know the heart-pounding thrill of true adventure— perhaps whitewater rafting, or, _ah!_ ”

Vespa knows well enough when Buddy’s using humor to avoid saying something, and she knows the best way to get her to stop for a second, too. After a few chaste, giggly kisses, she pulled back and looked Buddy in the eye. “Everything okay, sunshine?”

Buddy thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Sometimes,” she said, sounding almost wistful, “I just wonder what it would have been like to have lived a normal life. Courted each other over coffee and liquor, been able to take vacations to resorts and try galactic delicacies and return to comfort and safety. Delusions of grandeur, no?”

“And learn the piano,” Vespa murmured, catching on. She leaned forwards and kissed each one of Buddy’s fingertips, then closed her eyes for a second.

“Bud, I’d like to get one one of these days. A piano. For the ship. I think it could be—“ she huffed out a quick laugh. “Think it’d go well with the decor. Maybe for our anniversary, or something.”

Buddy looked as though she was going to protest, her face falling slightly and mouth opening, but Vespa pushed on. “S’not like we don’t have any money saved up, anyways. We don’t have to get a crazy huge one or anything. But— for me? I like to hear you play?” It came out as more of a question.

Buddy shut her eyes, then slowly nodded. “All right,” she said. “On one condition.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I’d like to get you— I think the ship’s _decor_ would benefit from a garden. If that’s all right with you. We could plant our own mint for your tea,” she said. “And you could grow all sorts of biological curiosities. And tell me all about them.”

Vespa laid her head against Buddy’s chest, listening to the whirring of her geared heart. “You know what, Buddy?”

“What is it, dear heart?”

“Sometimes I wonder how I got this lucky.” She’d meant to say something a little less raw, less honest, but it was hardly untrue.

Buddy didn’t push her. “So that’s a yes to the garden?”

“God,” said Vespa, “you’re incredible.” She started to stand up, offering out a hand to Buddy. “C’mon, let’s go see what this place’s got for antique shops. Or— I got no clue, actually— where do you even get a piano?” The question went unanswered as she helped Buddy back over to the wheelchair, and they left, Vespa said a silent thanks to the garden.

**Author's Note:**

> gay minecraft youtuber voice PLEASE leave a comment down below. you don't know how much it means to me. i write for fun but also... because i like seeing your reactions!! if this made you smile or scowl, let me know!! or if you spotted a place where i tense shifted. i am not used to writing in past tense and i think it shows. or if you now want chocolate babka and black coffee, because i know i do. 
> 
> next chapter is already written- stay tuned for it next monday or tuesday! 
> 
> find me on tumblr @eaeolian or twitter @vesbud and keep it real, gamers


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